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Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Oregon: We make it easy to rip off the public

We'd been wondering whatever happened to the Mike Burton travel fraud scandal at the Portland State Patronage Center. State and local prosecutors have now forced him to admit that despite his earlier, lying protestations, he did indeed bill PSU for personal travel in Europe under the false pretense of attending business-related conferences. And so now Burton, former power broker at Metro, is a convicted criminal, on 18 months' probation, and he's been required to pay back $4500 to the university.

Of course, he's painted as a victim, too -- an alcoholic, suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome from Vietnam, etc. The guy is 70 years old. He'll no doubt keep his PERS retirement fund, and certainly the PERS-sponsored Medicare supplement will be expected to pick up the tab for his required "treatment." If you were a bookkeeper at the local hardware store and you pinched $4500, you might not get off so easy, but if you're a bigshot politician...

Oh, well. It's always remarkable when a public official is busted for corruption in Oregon, whose residents are pollyannishly blind to human nature when it comes to their clean, green state and local government. But in this case, even more remarkable is the letter that prosecutors wrote to their bosses, expressing their alarm at how lax Portland State is when it's handing out travel reimbursements to bureaucrats like Burton. As posted by Willy Week, they wrote in part:

Of course, the face cards running PSU, which has reduced itself in recent years to little more than a real estate enterprise, can never admit that mistakes were made, or that bad judgment was exercised. Oh no, the provost has given it the scoundrel's best "The system worked" response. Great message for the hapless students.

Something similar happened last week, when an administrative law judge let two Portland school district employees off the hook in connection with last year's election abuse scandal. In that incident, first brought to light on this blog, the district illegally used taxpayer funds to promote a pending ballot measure regarding school funding. Even if the employees in question had violated state elections law, the judge was unwilling to impose a sanction because the Oregon secretary of state's office had dragged its feet in promulgating the necessary regulations needed to interpret state law. Instead, it processed the Portland case based on a manual it had previously produced, which was not strong enough authority to bring an action against anyone.

In other words, without regulations, the law prohibiting use of tax funds for politics had little or no effect at all. A regular scammers' delight, this place is. At least a few of the miscreants at the school district admitted guilt and paid their fines before it was revealed that they had nothing to worry about. They all could have gotten off on a technicality -- a blunder by our secretary of state.

Comments (12)

Sorry to hear about where Mike Burton has ended up, on probation as a criminal. When I met him I was an activist and he was my Representative in the Legislature. I wanted to introduce bills that would open up better access to the law by ordinary (pro se) citizens doing their own legal work. To my surprise, Mike put me to work with legislative legal staff who wrote up laws requiring county clerks to give reasonable help to non-lawyers and requiring equitable law library access for all of us too. Mike didn't mention that such bills would never leave the Judiciary committee but I can boast that my bills were in the legislature.

Burton is the least offensive, PSU is the burial ground for all the ex-gov employees (remember PDC/ Erin Flynn) where they give them a make-work job at $180K/yr and in turn they keep quiet.

Just for once, could they at lease make an example of someone and take away their PERS just to put some fear into these scofflaws? Otherwise, these guys will keep ripping off the system, keep the same benefits or get a $75 fine.

This is what the ALJ said: "If this matter had been decided on the merits, I would have found that Ames established a mitigating circumstance by presenting credible evidence that PPS had legal counsel review each of the documents in question." (Footnote, page 101).

P.S. The ALJ, Dove Gutman, is a woman, despite the reporter's error in assigning her the masculine pronoun.

Ames was rewarded with a job from the Governor and even the faux slap on the wrists were revoked.

It doesn't matter that an Admin/Law Judge wasted weeks of her time and cut down a few small trees printing her findings.

It's a non-issue: political campaigning by public employees HAPPENS ALL THE TIME both on the clock and off. Nobody is going to police the issue because they're friends with the offenders.

Democratic Hegemony in Oregon is designed to perpetuate itself: PERIOD. It's as if they crossed Richard Daley with Neil Goldschmidt and sprinkling of JFK's earnestness. Rules, laws, oversight, and separation of powers mean nothing here.

Mike Burton is the exception, not the rule. Sarah Carlin Ames is the rule.

The worst indignity of all: when Oregon's public servants are done protecting their own at the expense of good public policy, the taxpapers get to subsidize their upper middle class incomes until they die.

It's unconscionable that in Oregon, violations of law such as those in state elections is not enforced with the same vigor that Oregon high school golf rules are enforced:

On verge of state history, Oregon golfer loses state title to scorecard violation

Eugene (Ore.) Churchill High girls golfer Caroline Inglis was on the cusp of history. After winning the Oregon Scholastic Activities Association Class 5A state tournament during each of her first three years, Inglis finished the final round of the 2012 state tournament with a 3-under 69, a score that completed a dominant performance that was nine shots better than anyone else in the tournament.

Road Work

Miles run year to date: 45
At this date last year: 117
Total run in 2016: 155
In 2015: 271
In 2014: 401
In 2013: 257
In 2012: 129
In 2011: 113
In 2010: 125
In 2009: 67
In 2008: 28
In 2007: 113
In 2006: 100
In 2005: 149
In 2004: 204
In 2003: 269